Wednesday, April 30

PAUL FINEBAUM: Back with hour two of the show here this afternoon, where we've been talking about what I think, by any definition, has been a banner month for Nick Saban's Alabama football program. First we had another epic turnout at the A-Day Game, followed last week by Saban singlehandedly revolutionizing college recruiting with his -- did you even know you could talk to someone over the Internet? [pause] No, I know e-mail and instant-message and all that stuff, but did you know you could talk to someone and see their face live on camera, and they could talk to you and see yours? How'd he figure out how to do that? [pause] It's called 'videoconferencing'? Has anybody ever done this before? [pause] No? Well, so not only did Nick Saban invent a way to talk to someone live over the Internet, so far there's been no conclusive evidence that he didn't invent the Internet to begin with. I mean, all due respect to our former vice-president Al Gore, but let's give credit where credit is due.

All right. But now we're gonna get into this press conference he had today, just the usual briefing, you know, spring practice and all that, and maybe some of you have heard this clip already, but I'm gonna go ahead and play it again -- Kerry, run the clip from Saban's press conference.

NICK SABAN: . . . starting to come together OK -- you know, we're looking for playmakers on the offensive line, first of all, and Marlon Davis had a good day, Andre had a good day, but nobody's at a point now where they can just rest on their laurels and assume they're gonna start. A'ight? This is a long process, and I've told them that, and --

[audible passing of gas]

SABAN: -- we didn't do well enough on these fundamentals last year that just anybody's gonna get a pass. We've got a quarterback to protect and some running backs that we can't just leave out there to dry . . .

FINEBAUM: Everybody hear that? Nick Saban cut one in a press conference and just kept right on going. Like it -- like it didn't even happen! Can you imagine this going on at any other school? I mean, can you picture any other coach in the nation, standing up there, on the firing line, all these reporters pointing their microphones and their recorders at you, and you fart and don't miss a single beat? Up until now we'd just been conditioned to expect that if a coach had to let one loose up there, he'd be a gentleman about it, hold it in until the end of the conference, or maybe do that thing where you kind of clench your butt so that you only let a little bit out at a time, not enough to make an audible sound -- Nick Saban doesn't care about that. I mean, this is a no-nonsense guy: He's gonna give you what he's gonna give you, and if that's a fart in a press conference, then there you go. And some people are gonna complain about this, but what they don't get is that Nick Saban is just not going to be kept inside their box. He's not going to be bound by that. And that's why this team has such a bright future ahead of it.

Danny from Oak Grove, you're on with the Paul Finebaum Radio Network. How are you today, sir?

DANNY: I'm great, Paul, how are you?

FINEBAUM: I'm excellent, Danny, thank you.

DANNY: Well, Paul, I just want to say I agree with everything you said. For him to cut one like that and not get flustered, or even pause in what he was sayin' -- that's what we need in a coach, Paul. That's the kind of courage, or composure, or whatever you wanna call it that's gonna win us some games.

FINEBAUM: You're exactly right, Danny --

DANNY: Has anyone ever done somethin' like that before?

FINEBAUM: I'm sorry? You mean fart in a press conference?

DANNY: Yeah.

FINEBAUM: That's a good question, Danny, that's an excellent question, and I don't know the answer to that. We'll get our staff folks working on some tapes, and listeners, if you have any knowledge of that or if you can answer Danny's question, by all means, call in.

DANNY: Thanks, Paul.

FINEBAUM: Thank you, Danny. Robert in McCalla, how are you today, sir?

ROBERT: Wonderful, Paul, I gotta ask you, were you at that press conference?

FINEBAUM: Was I physically there? No sir, I didn't make it to that one.

ROBERT: Well, I was there, just kind of got to listen in for a while, and I got to smell the fart that Coach Saban cut . . .

FINEBAUM: No kiddin'. How was it?

ROBERT: Paul, I can honestly say I have never smelled a fart quite like it. It was kind of like fresh-baked bread --

FINEBAUM: Really!

ROBERT: Yeah -- like garlic bread, I guess I should say, it was a fart and all, but still, as farts go, it was pretty impressive.

FINEBAUM: And what's interesting is that they say people like the smell of their own farts but hate other people's -- but you're saying this one was nice? How'd the rest of the room react to it?

ROBERT: Well, they all looked like they liked it all right -- I saw a few people sniffin' the air, like they knew somethin' was different, and none of them looked disgusted or anything like that, so . . .

FINEBAUM: You know, I'd be interested in finding out what you've got to put in your diet to make your farts smell like fresh-baked bread. I'm assuming Nick Saban isn't on some macrobiotic diet or having organic food flown in from California or something like that, so whatever he eats is something any of the rest of us can get at the Publix anytime we want, but how does he do it? How has he been able to figure out something that no coach -- to the best of our knowledge -- has been able to do? And again, you're seeing this investment from Mal Moore pay off in ways nobody could've foreseen back in 2007. When you're willing to make a brave move, and you're willing to shell out some money for a top-flight coach, you get farts that smell like fresh bread.

JERRY: Hi, Paul, good to be on your show -- been listening for a long time and this is the first time I've called in, so I'm excited to be on today.

FINEBAUM: Glad to have you. What's on your mind?

JERRY: Well, I was thinkin' about how this sets us up for --

FINEBAUM: You're talking about Coach Saban's passing gas, now.

JERRY: -- yessir, I was thinkin' about how that might set us up for a big season but then also a big recruiting year in oh-nine, because even though this has happened pretty early in that recruiting process, I gotta think that there are kids all over the Southeast or even the country who are gonna see that clip or hear that gas and think, 'That's a guy who doesn't care about puttin' on appearances or tellin' the press or anybody what they want to hear, that's a guy who just cares about winnin'.' But I was wonderin' whether you thought that might come into play, so I'll hang up and listen.

FINEBAUM: Yes, Jerry, and I think that's an excellent point, because the personality of a coach has so much to do with the decision that a kid makes when he's coming out of high school. And I would bet there are more than a few kids who are gonna see this tape and be impressed with the fact that his mind was more on the team and how they were doing than on trying to hold in his gas and come off as pretty for the TV cameras. I mean, you can look at it this way -- a kid's got the choice between Nick Saban, national-title winner, coached at the NFL level, not afraid to cut one at a press conference, or Joe Schmoe, no NFL experience, standing up there grimacing and clenching his teeth so that he won't let out any flatulence, just so that everyone will think he's all nice and proper and no one's gonna go, 'Oh, so-and-so farted in a press conference' in their newspaper article. Who do you think that kid's gonna pick? [pause] I mean, I know who I'd pick, I can't speak for anyone else, but yeah, I think that is gonna make a difference, and that's an excellent point to make. Glad you brought that up, Jerry. George in Birmingham, you're up next on the Paul Finebaum Radio Network.

GEORGE: Yeah, Paul, you asked whether anyone had done anything like this before, and you and all the Bama fans are acting like this is the first time it's happened, but heck, Tommy Tuberville burped in a press conference right before the Auburn-Ole Miss game two years ago! --

FINEBAUM: I'm sorry, George, he burped?

GEORGE: Yeah, I remember it clearly, he was doing his Friday press conference and it was right after lunch, I guess, and he burped. Maybe tried to hold it in a little, but he --

FINEBAUM: Now, I don't doubt your story, George, I'm sure that happened, but do you really think that that's on a par with Saban farting in front of a room full of reporters and TV cameras?

GEORGE: It's gas, isn't it, Paul?

FINEBAUM: Sure, it's gas, but do you really honestly believe that a belch is comparable with a -- with flatulence?

GEORGE: One comes out the mouth, Paul, one comes out the other end, it's the same --

FINEBAUM: See, right there, you've proven my point. Go back to that rhyme everyone learned in elementary school: 'Pardon me for burping, it wasn't very smart, but if it'd come out the other end, it would've been a fart.' Even as kids we know that a fart and a belch are on two different levels.

GEORGE: Paul, you're giving Saban all this credit for something that happened during spring practice! Tuberville burped during the season, the Friday before a game, and you're just acting like it's no big deal! You think Tuberville wasn't standing before a whole bunch more cameras and news reporters than --

FINEBAUM: Lemme ask you this, George, how'd Auburn do in that game?

GEORGE: In the Ole Miss game?

FINEBAUM: Yeah. You remember what the score was?

GEORGE:[pause] I know Auburn won.

FINEBAUM: Uh-huh. But you remember by how much? [pause] We're looking it up right now, and I believe -- yeah, they're telling me 23-17 was the final score in that one. A top-ten Auburn team, playing a godawful Ed Orgeron Ole Miss team, and they won by six points. That's what that burp got you, George. You may think it's comparable to Saban farting on stage, but that's all that got you, was a six-point win over maybe the worst team in the SEC.

GEORGE: And what's that fart gonna get Alabama, another loss to Monroe? Another trip to Shreveport for a bowl game?

FINEBAUM: George, did you listen to the clip? I mean, I'm wondering if we even heard the same fart. You're apparently an Auburn fan, and that's fine, but I don't see how anybody could hear or smell that fart and not be impressed by it. And I'll tell you something, George, any coach in the SEC, whether it's Tuberville or Les Miles or Richt or anyone else, they just dismiss this fart as no big deal and it's gonna come back to haunt them. I mean, it may be too early to say just yet, but that little bit of gas that he passed may have upset the balance of power in the Southeastern Conference.

GEORGE:[audible sigh] Well, Paul, I enjoy listenin' to your show, even when it's about Bama, but I think we're gonna just have to agree to disagree on this one.

FINEBAUM: Well, that's fine, and I do appreciate the call, but I'm stickin' to my guns here, that fart could make a lot of people look real stupid by the time the 2008 season is over. And Nick Saban ain't gonna be one of them.

[Bumper: Bush's "Machinehead," fade in]

FINEBAUM: Coming up after the break, we'll take some more of your calls and let you weigh in on Nick Saban's effluviation, plus in the next half-hour we'll have Kevin Scarbinsky from the Birmingham News on to talk about it and -- you know what, Kerry, what that guy said about the fresh-baked bread thing, I wonder if that means Coach Saban's feces might actually not stink. We'll ask Kevin Scarbinsky about it, take your calls, and a whole lot more, after this.

[Bumper: Bush's "Machinehead," fade out]

[CUE PANTS STORE AD, 0:30]

(Thanks to Stanley for helping to provide the inspiration for this crap.)

Tuesday, April 29

• Before this increasingly pants-centric blog digs into the heart of today's memo, first things first: Congratulations, Georgia Gym Dogs, on your fourth consecutive national gymnastics title. And what the hey, good luck on making it one for the thumb next year. If that happens, then an entire senior class will have graduated from UGA never knowing what it's like to not be defending national champs. How many other people in any sport can say that?

Now, how is that not enabling me like a motherfucker? My only dilemma now is deciding whether to buy these pants now or hold out for a pair that have little Ugas patterned all over them, which these folks hint they might be offering next year. I mean, the Super-G pattern is certainly a quantum leap, but pants with little Ugas . . . I don't need to tell you that those pants would be my Everest. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how this drama plays out.

• As a side note, said female reader is soon to make the very tricky one-SEC-school-to-another grad-school jump -- she's headed up to the University of Alabama to start law school this fall. Congratulations, and I wish you the best of luck on both your law studies and your newfound (and inescapable) association with stuff like this. (H/T: EDSBS.)

If being a Bulldog is a kind of religion, then this is apparently our Holy Communion.

• To the surprise of absolutely no one -- but to the obvious delight of Your Humble Blogger -- red pants got a mention in Every Day Should Be Saturday's epic "Stuff Red and Black People Like" last week, a compendium that is snarky, insulting, suffused with a strain of contempt thick enough to cut with a chainsaw -- and all too horribly true, even for this rabid Dawg fan. If you're one of the six remaining Web surfers who haven't checked it out yet, go now.

• As someone who both wastes an inordinate amount of time each year (including this one) watching the NFL Draft and loves a good Internet quiz, I thought I'd point y'all toward this one, which gives you a quote and asks you whether it came from NFL draft coverage, a "Dancing with the Stars" judge, or an escort-service ad. I was a not-too-shabby 12-of-15 overall, but it was hard. At least as hard as the SATs.

•The actual draft, incidentally, was kind of a drag this year; a lot of trades spiced things up, but there seemed to be a real dearth of superstars, not just the Georgia hopefuls but pretty much everybody. I mean, when the #1 overall pick is an offensive lineman and the marquee QB taken at number three is someone that even his newly adopted hometown "fans" can't trouble themselves to get excited about, you know it's kind of a down year.

As for my own team, you know I've been bitching for what seems like eons about the Redskins' longstanding habit of trading away mid-round picks in exchange for free agents who have maybe one or two good seasons left in them before they start hobbling around on walkers. Well, Draft Day '08 was kind of a "be careful what you wish for" moment, because while my guys ended up with an embarrassment of riches in terms of draft picks -- five in rounds 2-4 alone, which is five more than they had last year -- they somehow didn't feel it was necessary to use those picks to address serious weaknesses on the D-line, not to mention filling the gaping Sean-Taylor-shaped hole in their secondary. Yet somehow Colt Brennan was worth taking at #186. Okey-dokey, guys. I'm sure the kid's raring to go, but I hope we haven't forgotten just how badly he needs a decent offensive line in front of him.

• No real point to this item, I just wanted to share with y'all one more time how excited I am to be heading to the Georgia-Arizona State game this September.

• Since I've just been back to Athens to relive my college days and shared with you some of the details of my dialing back my maturity level a decade's worth or so, I might as well go all-out and share the following video with you. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you "Everything Poops," not to be confused with Taro Gomi's children's classic Everyone Poops. There's no point in me trying to deny that this clip made me laugh until tears were literally streaming down my face; just watch it (while exercising caution if you're in a work environment, or if you have a full bladder, for that matter).

Monday, April 28

On Friday I looked forward to this past weekend's informal Red & Black reunion in Athens by recounting my five most treasured memories from college, but what I failed to consider at the time was just how little of the surface of my college years I was actually scratching. That didn't really dawn on me until we met up at the new R&B headquarters on Baxter Street, which make our old shop at 123 North Jackson look like a Cabrini-Green meth lab by comparison. Not only is the building itself a palace, but the kids who get to work there now are using computers every bit as fancy as the hardware I've got at my current job. I would go off on a crotchety rant about life not being fair and kids these days not knowing how good they have it and blah blah blah, but I can't because I've been distracted by a fascinating feature that longtime publisher Harry Montevideo was kind enough to show us on Saturday: The entire back catalog of the R&B, every last issue, has been digitized by the UGA library and put online. You can browse through them here (though you may have to download a plug-in to get started).

I won't bore you -- and oh, lordy, would I bore you -- by repeating all my Greatest Hits from the opinions page; anything you can conjure up in your head about my circa-1998 feelings on SUVs, the Republican Party, or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is probably far superior to what I actually wrote. What I will do is give you a little nostalgia tour of the mugshots that went with those columns. I think this historical rundown -- an "Evolution of the Feces," if you will, and I do -- is going to be instructive in terms of demonstrating why my success with women, even in a target-rich environment such as the University of Georgia, has been so meager over the years.

Herewith, my first-ever R&B mugshot. Keep in mind this is how thousands of readers were first introduced to me back in mid-1997.

Now, I distinctly remember being laid low with a raging head cold at the time that photo was taken, so it's not like I was putting my best foot (or face) forward by any means, but still, gahh. My goatee looks like it was maintained with a Black & Decker hedge trimmer, and needless to say, I wasn't smiling (in fact, I only actually learned how to smile for photos sometime in the last six months or so).

Thankfully, version 2.0, which mercifully replaced Boo Radley up there in time to make regular appearances on the editorial page during the summer I served as opinions editor, was a little better . . .

The good news is, the goatee was a little better-trimmed by that point; the bad news is, it still existed at all, and my sartorial choices weren't much better (that said, you can have my Gap anorak when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands). When I was appointed Variety editor for the regular daily fall paper later that year, we took another one . . .

. . . in which I actually bothered to look presentable (I think I had a job interview or a meeting or something like that the morning that photo was taken, hence the reason they were able to catch me on the one day out of the year I was wearing a tie). The goatee's still there, but oddly enough, I finally ditched it within two weeks of this shot; surely, then, the final version of this mug, the one that was front and center during my last semester, the one during which I actually got to occupy the editor-in-chief's chair, we'd finally get right . . .

Ohhhh. No dice. So sad. The goatee's gone, but so's the coat and tie, and my hairstyle has regressed back to something closer to what I was rocking in sixth grade than anything that would be considered remotely stylish, even in 1999.

Based on this series, then, I can only estimate that at no time in my college career, even on my best days, did I ever rise higher than, say, 40th percentile out of the whole student body in terms of physical attractiveness. It's tough having a Costco economy-sized drum of FAIL staring you in the face like that, but fortunately, I've risen above it.

The top photo is me (far right) with four of my best friends from the R&B; the bottom photo is me and my friend Jennifer getting wicked pissed at The Globe on Friday night. And I have finally become, as you can see, one sexy bitch. I've long since aged to the point where I'm too old to be considered desirable by college chicks, but it still happened. I count this as a moral victory.

More:

Me and my favorite journalism professor, Conrad Fink, in the R&B newsroom. Fink was the AP's Asia bureau chief during much of Vietnam, and thus spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time lying on his stomach in rice paddies with bullets whizzing over his head; I'm sure he could not be prouder that I'm now basically living off a state government's dime, for all intents and purposes doing PR for a university.

The girls and the guys at the Twilight Criterium bike race in downtown Athens. Goddamn, those are some sexy individuals up there. And the girls aren't bad either.

Last but not least, our whole group in the lobby of the R&B building.

Obviously, after a weekend of uproarious-laughter-filled reminiscing and All-Pro alcohol consumption, the question was frequently asked -- not least by Your Humble Blogger -- Why in the world did we ever graduate from here? For many of us, this often graduated into, Hell, I'm comin' back! It really is sad how much better-equipped I am right now to have a non-stop kickass four years of college than I was back then; my alcohol tolerance has increased dramatically (I was effectively on a solid IV drip from 5 p.m. Saturday to 1 a.m., and still woke up bright 'n' early Sunday morning ready to run a 5K if I had to); I'm a better writer now, too; and I'm exponentially more attractive than I was ay any point between September 1995 and May 1999 (though certain caveats apply to that statement, of course).

And yet, even if I could be magically offered four more undergrad years at UGA with which to inflict my older, wiser, sexier self on the world, it probably wouldn't be as good, because my fondness for the place has so much to do with the people who were enjoying it along with me -- the folks I got to hang out with this past weekend. If I could gather 10 or 12 of us up in an MTV "Real World" house on Milledge Avenue and relive the good ol' days that way, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but since that's not feasible -- even if it is a pretty intriguing reality-show premise, now that I think about it -- those days are probably best left as-is in our collective memory banks, unsullied by any craven mid- or one-third-life attempts at going back and re-enacting them. Not that it would necessarily be as soul-obliterating as this, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun as what I remember. Memory Lane may have been widened and expanded out into a roaring twelve-lane superhighway, but that doesn't mean you're still not screwed if you get on the wrong side and barrel headlong into oncoming traffic.

But that just makes those friends, and the fact that they've seen fit to stay so close to me (and each other) over the years, mean that much more. Y'all know who you are, both those of you who were at the "reunion" and those who couldn't make it, and this is as good a time as any to say: Thank you. Thank you for letting me join in your reindeer games; thank you for cheering me when I was up and giving me a hand when I was down; thank you for making me pee my pants with laughter on an hourly, if not minutely, basis; and thank you for, by your mere presence, making me a happier, cooler, and better person.

And I'm not kidding about the "Real World" thing. Tell me now if you want on that list, 'cause when my Mega Millions numbers finally hit, we're totally doing that.

Friday, April 25

For the third time in four weeks, I'm heading out for the weekend -- this time it's back to Athens for an unofficial reunion of folks who worked at our student newspaper, The Red & Black, while I was at UGA. I'm pumped as hell about this, but at the same time kind of apprehensive, because I know that 48 hours of laughing and boozing it up with my best friends from school are only going to lead to the inevitable come-down in which I ask myself why, oh why did I ever graduate from college in the first place.

Nah, fuck that. College was a straight-up blast and I'm not gonna let any of the depressing stuff about real life intrude for the next few days, particularly since numerous people have told me my current, supposedly "real-world" lifestyle is barely distinguishable from that of an unreconstructed frat boy as it is. This is a weekend for throwing the usual cares about "the real world" and "my job" and "obeying the law" straight out the window and just enjoying the good times, both past and present. But since y'all can't come with me to Athens this weekend -- or at least you better not, 'cause seriously, that's on some stalker shit, seek help -- you're gonna have to content yourself with the past. My past, that is. Not that you give a crap, but this week's +5 is My Five Favorite Memories From College, At Least The Ones I Was Sober Enough To Recount.

April 1, 1999: The Jim Harrick double-switcherooDuring my last semester at Georgia, I was the editor-in-chief of The Red & Black -- don't get excited, I was the only one who applied for the job that semester -- so every other night, alternating with the managing editor, I would have to read every last word on every single page to check for errors and then stay at the newspaper office until the whole thing had been sent out the door to the printer. On the morning of April 1 -- yup, that's the actual date all this stuff went down -- we got the official word that Jim Harrick was leaving the University of Rhode Island to become the head basketball coach at UGA, and immediately began assembling the splashiest front page possible to announce the news. Later in the afternoon, we got the unfortunate news that Harrick had changed his mind, he didn't want to leave URI after all, he wasn't coming. So we tossed the first front page and started laying out the "Not coming after all" spread. And then around 7 in the evening, if memory serves, we got yet another surprise: He'd changed his mind a second time and was coming to Georgia. So we flushed yet another front-page layout and started all over again, and still managed to get the thing out just a few minutes after the midnight deadline. It was a wild afternoon, to be sure, but it made for a great story afterward, and it was really great to see everyone in the newsroom pull together to roll with the considerable number of punches we all experienced while Harrick dicked around up in Providence. This would be just the first on a lengthy list of instances in which the Harricks screwed Bulldog Nation and left us a dazed, whimpering mess, but this one, at least, we could laugh about later.

Summer 1998-Spring 1999: Going to "church"Part of what made the Day Of Many Harrick Shenanigans so much more tolerable than it otherwise would've been was the fact that we could all get together and laugh about it (by which I mean "get drunk about it") afterward at Boneshakers. Georgia grads of a certain vintage will remember Boneshakers as Athens's most popular gay bar, which it was, but the '80s Nights they did every Wednesday were popular enough amongst the straight crowd to bring the sexual-orientation mix to about 50-50, and the R&B crew's attendance on Wednesdays became so regular that my dear friend Alice Coggin started referring to it as "church." During the summer of '98, when I failed to lock up an actual internship and instead spent my time doing the opinions page of the R&B's weekly summer edition and working graveyard hours at DialAmerica, we'd send the paper out the door on Wednesday evening and immediately head over to my friend Chandler's apartment to prime ourselves with liberal amounts of grape Kool-Aid spiked with Golden Grain before making our weekly church trip. (This soon came to be called "Golden Girls Kool-Aid" since reruns of that show always seemed to be on when we were over there) I'm sure that my regularity as a Boneshakers patron ratchets up my quotient of Teh Ghey even more than it already was, but who cares, it was a blast. And I'm not convinced we're all not going to get plastered on Saturday night and dance around in the middle of Hancock Street to Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" just to try and recreate the good ol' days.

November 1, 1997: "We Believed"More commonly known as the day we beat Spurrier's Gators for the first time in eight tries; this one's pretty self-explanatory. I watched the game over at my friend Meredith's house and I distinctly remember all of us going out later that night and strutting around like we ourselves had picked Florida off four times; in true Jim Donnan fashion, the Dawgs went right out the very next game and laid an ostrich egg against a lesser-ranked Auburn team that had just gotten shut out at home by Mississippi State, but neverthless, neither that glorious night nor the 100-point "WE BELIEVED" headline on the front of the following Monday's R&B are things that anyone can ever take away from me.

February 13, 1999: Being a journalist finally pays offThe one and only time in my life I've had a date in the remote vicinity of Valentine's Day came, ironically enough, after a column I wrote for the R&B about how much Valentine's Day sucked. This girl in one of my journalism classes whom I'd always thought was cute e-mailed me saying she liked my column and did I want to go out sometime, and we ended up going to dinner and then a party at my friend Kristen's house on the 13th. I can honestly say it's one of the few times in my life when being a writer or journalist ever resulted in something tangibly positive; not only was she smart and fun, she was the spitting image of Drew Barrymore. (And I'm not just making that up out of thin air -- nearly everyone at the party told me "She looks like Drew fucking Barrymore!", usually followed, of course, by "What the hell is she doing here with you? Did you drug her or something?") Sadly, as a later-than-late bloomer who'd only had two, maybe three girlfriends my entire life up to that point and thus didn't know a good thing when it dropped right into his fucking lap, I managed to screw this relationship up royally after only a couple months, but still, it was nice while it lasted.

Sometime during 1996: Preaching the Seuss Gospel at the Tate CenterBeing both a major college campus and and a festering den of the worst kinds of iniquity, UGA got plenty of visits throughout the 1990s from "confrontational evangelist" Jed Smock, otherwise known as "Brother Jed," and his toady "Brother Ken." Bros. Jed and Ken would get up on the free-speech platform at the Tate Center plaza and basically rail away for hours on end about what whores and drunkards and masturbators all of us students were; this didn't convert a single person that I'm aware of, but it did give us some rollicking good entertainment between classes. One afternoon, as Jed took the stage -- and I don't know what got into me that day -- I went to the Tate Center bookstore and bought a copy of Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham; I then jumped up on the platform and started "preaching the Gospel of Dr. Seuss," mainly just to see if I could yell louder than Brother Jed. I don't think I even made it through the whole book before Jed and his entourage left in righteous disgust. But I didn't know what an impression this sermon had made until years later, when my parents happened upon another Brother Jed appearance while doing a campus tour with my sister. While they were standing there marveling at Jed's holy fury, some kid next to them said "You should've been here a few years ago when some guy got up there and started preaching Green Eggs and Ham to the crowd," and my parents were like, "Oh my God! That was our son!" and soon everybody wanted to meet the parents of Green Eggs and Ham Guy. I won't say that's the proudest my parents have ever been of me, but I'll bet it's in their top five.

Ah, good times, good times. My blood-alcohol level has jumped a couple points just thinking about it. Anyway, this week's Ten is composed of stuff that I was listening to back in college, not that that's all that different from what I'm listening to now:

Thursday, April 24

The NFL draft is coming up this weekend, which makes this the time of year that everybody and his cousin puts up "mock drafts" attempting to predict which players each NFL team will pick in the first round. To me, since each pick after #1 is in some ways affected by each of the picks that came before it, this is kind of like trying to pick which presidential candidate will win each state's primary . . . in August. And it's basically just a big opportunity for people to look stupid (though in defense of many of the mainstream media's pro-football commentators, that's nothing that appears to have ever bothered them before).

So instead of doing that, I'm doing a Mock Un-Draft -- an opportunity for each NFL team to get rid of someone they never should've signed in the first place. After all, for every player that gets drafted, some other poor schmuck has to get cut to make room on the roster. Everybody ready? OK, Miami, you're on the clock.

1. MIAMI DOLPHINSThe pick: PR/KR Ted Ginn Jr., Ohio State. Really, Miami's at a point where they could un-draft their entire roster except for Ronnie Brown and be a better team for it, but dumping Ginn, taken with the ninth overall pick of 2007, would be a symbolic break with an annus horribilis that began with a head-slapper of a first-round draft pick and somehow only got worse from there. They can wait until the second round to unload Ricky Williams, who will be so high on Acapulco Gold by that point he won't even notice.

2. ST. LOUIS RAMSThe pick: QB Brock Berlin, Miami (Fla.). What the fuck is this guy doing on an NFL roster? According to Wikipedia, he doesn't even have a jersey number at the moment, which is just as well; cut him loose and be done with it. At this point, even a concussed, body-casted Trent Green is probably more likely to lead the Rams to a win than Berlin is.

3. ATLANTA FALCONSThe pick: QB Joey Harrington, Oregon. For the sole reason that the longer this guy stays on the Falcons' roster, the longer it's going to take for D.J. Shockley to earn his rightful place as the starting quarterback.

4. OAKLAND RAIDERSThe pick: PRES Al Davis, Syracuse. Yes, we all loved his antics and his oh-so-quotable quotes once upon a time, but let's get real here -- Al's gone crazier than a whole Airbus A380 full of shithouse rats, and at the moment is an even bigger impediment to the Raiders' future success than Bill Callahan was. Send him and his collection of silk Starter jackets off to the best sanitarium money can buy and put the team under the protection of the NFL or the U.S. government until such time as a sane ownership consortium can be assembled.

5. KANSAS CITY CHIEFSThe pick: QB Brodie Croyle, Alabama. I know that to somebody, at some point in the indefinite past, making the oft-injured Croyle the starting quarterback of an NFL team seemed like a good idea; I'm just having trouble twisting my brain into the Möbius strip it would take to produce that kind of logic. Was Damon Huard really that bad?

6. NEW YORK JETSThe pick: HC Eric Mangini, Wesleyan. It's all well and good that Mangini took the Jets to a 10-6 record and a first-round playoff win in his first year with the Jets, but after Spygate, does anyone seriously doubt that Mangini is owned by his former boss? Bill Belichick is in the guy's head now, to the point where the Jets can basically make two automatic marks in their "Division Losses" column every season. Bring back Al Groh; at least he's too dense to be intimidated like that.

7. SAN FRANCISCO 49ersThe pick: OC Mike Martz, Fresno State. Hiring Mike Martz has become the NFL equivalent of the old horror-movie cliché where the stranded motorists go into the creepy, dilapidated old mansion for help. It looks like a bad idea, it feels like a bad idea, and yet they can't stop themselves from doing it.

8. BALTIMORE RAVENSThe pick: QB Kyle Boller, California. He's a quarterback who was tutored by Jeff Tedford; strike one. He has a career 71.9 QB rating in the pros; strike two. He once dated Tara Reid; strike three, you're out. Bring on the Troy Smith Era!

9. CINCINNATI BENGALSThe pick: WR Chad Johnson, Oregon State. Obviously, he doesn't want to be there. Cut him so the Redskins can sign him. I mean, so that your team morale improves. That's what I meant to say, team morale.

10. NEW ORLEANS SAINTSThe pick: TE Jeremy Shockey, Miami (Fla.). No, they haven't actually signed the poster child for repressed homosexuality yet, but you just know they're gonna. Saints, I'm begging you to stop this danse macabre by pre-emptively un-signing this overrated thimbledick, thereby preventing him from douching up what otherwise looks like it could be a reasonably solid team going into 2008. Haven't the people of New Orleans suffered enough?

11. DETROIT LIONS (from Buffalo)The pick: WR Reggie Ball, Georgia Tech. Lions CEO Matt Millen makes what appears to be the first blockbuster deal of the 2008 Un-Draft by trading their second-, fourth, and fifth-round drops, as well as a second-round drop in 2009, to Buffalo for the Bills' first-rounder -- before realizing that this isn't like the original draft and there's no advantage whatsoever to picking earlier. Why does he do this? Because he’s Matt Millen and that’s just the kind of thing he does. The obvious drop here would be Millen himself, but be honest, what's more embarrassing -- being the team that's run by Matt Millen, or being the team that actually looked at Reggie Ball and said, "Yes, we think this guy's worthy of a roster position"? Yup, that's what I thought.

12. DENVER BRONCOSThe pick: RB Travis Henry, Tennessee. If the Broncos' RB system is so good that any schlub can get dropped into it and succeed, as some have suggested, then why have this dicklick sitting around on your roster? Nine illegitimate children by nine different women doesn't exactly reflect well on the franchise, particularly in a family-values state like Colorado. And if Trav hasn't figured out how to put on a condom in nearly 30 years on this planet, you've got to concede the very real possibility that he's going to do something really stupid like stick his dick in an electrical outlet or accidentally back the team bus over himself in the near future. And then where will you be? Might as well un-draft his ass now.

13. CAROLINA PANTHERSThe pick: WR Dwayne Jarrett, Southern Cal. I was really pissed when the Panthers drafted him last year rather than his USC teammate -- come on, Panthers, you're afraid of having two Steve Smiths on the roster? That could've been the source of some of the greatest misdirection plays in league history if only you'd given it a chance.

14. CHICAGO BEARSThe pick: RB Cedric Benson, Texas. The easy choice, clearly, would be to unload either of their unproductive quarterbacks, Rex Grossman or Kyle Orton. The problem, however, is that they only have two QBs on the roster at the moment, meaning that if they dump one then they're stuck with the other. So the obvious Plan B is to unload this waste of space. The downside to this pick is that it’ll leave them with a big hole at the RB position; fortunately, that’s really no different from the situation they’re in now.

15. DETROIT LIONSThe pick: CEO Matt Millen, Penn State. OK, yeah, they really do have to get rid of this guy.

16. ARIZONA CARDINALSThe pick: WR Jerheme Urban, Trinity University. Look, we've already got tons of Jeremys in the NFL, at least one Jeremi, and a Jeraime on top of that. How many stupid, pretentious alternate spellings of "Jeremy" do we have to endure before someone finally admits this has gotten out of hand? Better to slam the brakes on it now before someone signs this guy.

17. MINNESOTA VIKINGSThe pick: OT Bryant McKinnie, Miami (Fla.). Along with strong safety Darren Sharper, McKinnie represents the franchise's last remaining link to the 2005 scandal in which dozens of Vikings players basically orchestrated a seagoing orgy on Lake Minnetonka. (A Seagoing Orgy on Lake Minnetonka is going to be the subtitle of my autobiography, by the way.) Sharper, by virtue of not being completely worthless, gets to retain his roster spot; McKinnie gets the ax.

21. WASHINGTON REDSKINSThe pick: CEO Daniel Snyder. We've got to get rid of him now, because if past experience is any guide, he'll have traded away our second- through fifth-round picks in exchange for geriatric free agents and we won't be able to drop anyone again until the sixth round.

23. PITTSBURGH STEELERSThe pick: RB Najeh Davenport, Miami (Fla.). Yes, I know it probably looks like I'm picking an unfair number of former 'Canes here, and I don't want anyone to think I have anything against The U. I do, however, have something against people who poop in closets.

24. TENNESSEE TITANSThe pick: WR Paul Williams, Fresno State. The Titans have three Williamses in their receiving corps alone — Mike, Roydell, and Paul. Paul arguably contributed the least last season, so he gets shown the door. Hopefully the Titans organization will replace him with a Smith or a Johnson or a Wojciechowski to cut down on some of the confusion.

25. SEATTLE SEAHAWKSThe pick: ASST/SC Jim Mora Jr., Washington. This is just fucking sad. Mora, a University of Washington alum, got in trouble during his stint as the Falcons’ head coach for telling a radio audience his real dream job was head coach of the Huskies — and when he gets his walking papers a short time later, where does he go? Seattle. That’s like having a crush on a hot chick you don’t really have a shot with and then dating her best friend just to get close to her, and trust me, that never works. Just end this charade and cut Mora loose already; it’s not like Tyrone Willingham is gonna be around a whole lot longer anyway.

27. SAN DIEGO CHARGERSThe pick: HC Norv Turner, Oregon. Yeah, y’all won a resolutely godawful division last year and made it to the AFC title game. Seriously, how long do you think Norv is gonna be able to keep this going?

28. DALLAS COWBOYSThe pick: QBGF Jessica Simpson, J.J. Pearce High School. Yes, this is the obvious joke, but we all know Tony Romo’s brain barely has enough RAM to hold down simple tasks like handling a field-goal snap; even the most blinkered Cowboys fan out there can’t honestly think Chuckles is ever gonna win a playoff game as long as he’s got the added distraction of blond hair and an (admittedly spectacular) pair of tits following him around wherever he goes. Give J-Simp the heave-ho, set Romes up with a chick who looks more like Peter King, and give him a chance to spread his wings and fly, dammit!

29. INDIANAPOLIS COLTSThe pick: QB Josh Betts, Miami (Ohio). Let’s face it, being the backup quarterback for the Colts is kind of like being a Maytag repairman or the fact-checker for the Rush Limbaugh show. It’s bad enough that they signed Jim Sorgi to do nothing more than get dragged out onto the field for victory-formation kneeldowns; having a third QB on the payroll is just gratuitously cruel.

30. GREEN BAY PACKERSThe pick: QB Aaron Rodgers, California. We all know how this story ends. Rodgers stands, at best, about a 4-to-1 chance of ever having any kind of success in the NFL, and even if he turns out OK, the fans are gonna hate him because he’s committed the unpardonable sin of not being Brett Favre. Let’s just fast-forward past this inevitable soap opera, skip the middleman, and ship Rodgers directly to the Saskatchewan Roughriders or something. He’s already used to the climate.

31. NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTSThe pick: QB Tom Brady, Michigan; WR Wes Welker, Texas Tech; LB Tedy Bruschi, Arizona. As punishment for Spygate, the Pats’ control over the 31st overall pick is taken away and handed over to a three-judge panel consisting of Roger Goodell, me, and my friend Joe who’s a rabid Colts fan; the Patriots also get an additional first-round player taken away from them (and a third taken away solely because of Bill Simmons). These three players are dismissed as part of a tough-love social experiment to see if the Patriots’ legions of suspiciously recent fans will still support them if they don’t have any white players to cheer for.

32. NEW YORK GIANTSThe pick: QB David Carr, Fresno State. I don’t understand why teams do shit like this. It’s almost as if the Giants said, “Well, we’ve just won the Super Bowl, we have an extra roster spot . . . hell, just throw a dart at the waiver wire so we can all start our off-season vacations.” Tom Coughlin's plane to St. Bart's is leaving in 15 minutes, dammit! Just pick somebody! I imagine that similarly careless logic was also behind the decision to design red alternate home jerseys, but that’s just speculation on my part.

Wednesday, April 23

Well, we're back from the big New York trip -- actually, we arrived at the Atlanta airport on Monday, but our arrival back in Birmingham was delayed somewhat by my car's serpentine belt getting converted into Nabisco shredded wheat somewhere between Atlanta and the Georgia-Alabama line. Think about that -- we go three whole days in New York without so much as a paper cut, but the closest we come to a near-death experience the entire weekend occurs in Douglasville, Georgia. Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes, no? Anyway, a couple days late and a few hundred bucks less encumbered, my car finally made it home earlier today. Huzzah!

But the actual trip was great, thanks mainly to my parents, who went all-out and booked us a couple rooms at this place:

To say that this was the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in would be an understatement; it might've been the nicest room room I've ever stayed in (not that the competition for that is especially fierce, me being just a simple Alabama hick and all). It was a veritable oasis after a long, sweaty drive in from LaGuardia on Friday afternoon, which included a 30-minute stop-'n'-wait on the Queensboro Bridge while Pope Benedict's motorcade left the United Nations. We could clearly see the UN from our spot on the bridge and actually saw the motorcade head off down FDR Drive. I took a picture of it with my cell phone, but you really can't see any of it, so instead here's what we ran across just a few blocks later -- the Naked Cowboy playing guitar in an intersection.

Actually, you can't really see him all that well either. Trust me, he's there in the middle.

That day I would have the pleasure of a) trying haggis for the first time at a Scottish pub near the theatre district and b) seeing "Curtains," the Broadway comedy/musical/murder mystery starring David Hyde Pierce. I liked "Curtains" quite a bit better. Haggis actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it wasn't anything I'm going to be climbing over people to try again; if that's what's considered a delicacy in Scotland, Ewan MacGregor's "It's shite being Scottish" rant from "Trainspotting" makes a lot more sense.

The next day we went down to Chinatown and loaded up on fake designer handbags (well, the rest of my family loaded up on fake designer handbags; I've got a Donna Karan clutch purse at home I'm quite happy with, thanks). And we saw our second show, "November," a political comedy written by David Mamet that I had high hopes for but was ultimately pretty disappointed by (pops compared it to a so-so "Saturday Night Live" sketch drawn out over two and a half hours). The most interesting thing we did, though, was right after the show, when we went down the street to the 11:30 p.m. Mass at St. Malachy's Church, which has become known as the "Actor's Chapel" because it's supposedly where all the Broadway actors and stagehands go after their shows so that they don't have to go Sunday morning right before all the matinees.

Times Square at night, again taken with the cell phone.

Sunday I headed on down to the Village and talked football (and a bunch of other stuff) over lunch with a regular reader of the blog, an Ohio State grad who, ironically enough, first ventured over to Hey Jenny Slater from a link at MGoBlog. (I'm sure Brian will be shocked to discover that she neither yelled "Fuck Michigan" nor pooped in a styrofoam cooler at any point during the afternoon.) Then my sister and I made our pilgrimage to FAO Schwarz, where I took a picture of Lego Chewbacca.

I don't know who the kid is.

And then the next day we flew home and my car exploded, the end.

One of the fun things about the trip (besides being set up in a swank-ass hotel with plasma TVs in the rooms -- did I mention the TVs?) was the fact that now that I've been to New York a bunch of times and have knocked out all the touristy stuff like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty and whatnot, I can go up there and just hang out and barhop and people-watch for a few days. And you'll be happy to know that I more or less hit all five items on my shopping list of things to do in the Big Apple.

The only thing I guess I kind of missed out on was seeing Pope Benedict XVI in person. But I did get to buy a copy of the New York Post whose cover featured a photo of the Pope with his arms outstretched, juxtaposed with the headline "COME TO PAPA."

Friday, April 18

By the time you read this, I'll more than likely be on a plane to New York for the weekend with my family. My mom's and dad's birthdays are a couple weeks apart in March and April, and usually around this time of year they take a trip up to New York for a long weekend as sort of a join birthday celebration to go see some shows and whatnot, and this year I guess they just got a wild hair and decided that they'd like to bring my sister and me along. Here's pretty much how the conversation went down:

DAD: So your mom and I are planning another trip up to New York in a few weeks, and we were thinking we might bring you kids along this year, if you'd like to go.

ME: Really?

DAD: Yup.

ME: Are you paying for it?

DAD: Sure.

ME: Then hells yes.

Now, this isn't my first time up in New York, of course -- I wouldn't call myself an expert on the city by any stretch, but I've been there enough times to not be one of those people wearing brightly colored clothes and a fanny pack through Times Square and stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk to look up and go "Gol-dang!" at all the skyscrapers. In fact, I've kind of developed a routine for when I go up there, and while it's not like I follow this to the letter to the exclusion of any other activities, I do have a few specific things on my list that I like to try and check off if I have the time. So this week's +5 is the Five Things I Plan On Doing In New York This Weekend.

Shopping for counterfeit designer goodsMaybe I'm sheltered, but there's nothing like jetting on down to Chinatown and coming back with a fake Prada bag and a Breitling chronograph you paid a total of forty bucks for. It just feels naughty. Plus, it's not like anybody down here in Birmingham can tell the difference.

Waiting outside Rockefeller Center to see if Tina Fey comes outYes, I know Liz Lemon is not a real person and there is thus little chance I'm going to catch her strolling out after a taping of "TGS with Tracy Jordan." But dammit, nobody ever said celebrity stalking was easy, or productive, or grounded in reality. And as New Yorkers go, it's way better than stalking Donald Trump.

Going to ethnic neighborhoods and gorging myselfThe last time I went to New York I was walking through Times Square with a friend of mine and I saw there was a goddamn T.G.I. Friday's there now. No offense to T.G.I. Friday's -- if you're waiting for me to say a single bad thing about their menu, particularly their fried green beans, you can just keep waiting -- but for shit's sake, who goes up to New York City so that they can eat at T.G.I. Friday's? No, what you do is find the most hard-core ethnic neighborhood you can, Little Italy or the Greek part of Astoria being just a couple examples that spring immediately to mind, and stuff your fat face with delicious food cooked by the people who invented it. And no, in spite of what Steve Carell's character once said on "The Office," Sbarro doesn't count.

Watching street drummers in the subwayWhen you go to New York, you do so with the knowledge that you're going to be hit up for money at numerous points during the course of your trip. The thing is, I don't have a problem giving someone a few bucks if they actually have some kind of talent. And while some of y'all might think this is stupid, I really enjoy listening to the kids who hammer out rhythms on plastic buckets and garbage-can lids in the subway stations. I realize it's not for everybody, but in a world where Heidi fricking Montag has a recording contract, you've got to spare some props for the little guy who's actually doing something original.

Consuming large quantities of alcoholThis is a no-brainer. I realize that in cold practical terms, there's really not a lot of difference between "I went to New York and got shit-faced" and "I stayed at home in Southside Birmingham and got shit-faced," but somehow the first one just sounds cooler. It's also a hell of a lot more expensive -- I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled about paying six-fifty for a Bud Light -- but sometimes you just have to be willing to spend a little.

Wednesday, April 16

Not to be a major downer here, but if you get a chance today, take a moment or two to remember that today is the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting spree, and say a prayer for the families of the 32 people who died.

If you're interested in seeing what's going on in Blacksburg today, the Roanoke Times's blog of today's memorial events is here.

• Portrait of your modern-day Republican Party #4,472: At a Lincoln Day Dinner -- a Republican Party tradition named for the president who freed the slaves and ended the Civil War -- Rep. Geoff Davis refers to an African-American Senator, one of the leading candidates for president, as "boy." Honest Abe would be so proud!

"Sorry, I couldn't hear you, I was too busy SPINNING IN MY GRAVE."

• As for the folks who let loose with that kind of stupidity on the World Wide Internets as opposed to Lincoln Day Dinners, Roy Edroso has a hilarious guide to right-wing bloggers and how they're likely to cover this year's presidential election. It may only be funny to political junkies like me who have spent way more time slogging through both the lefty and righty blogospheres than they ever intended, but you might as well internalize it now, because a few of these folks (Glenn Reynolds being only the most obvious) are no doubt going to start popping up on your TV screens in cable-news talkfests before too long.

As for me, I know my political blogging has been pretty sparse lately, which will come across as lazy to some of you while being a blessed relief to others. I don't know -- Tuesday morning at Starbucks, I ran into an acquaintance of mine with whom I'd worked fairly closely in 2004, and she asked me, "Staying active lately?" And I had to reply that I was active for a while, but at this point I was pretty much just sitting around waiting for the primary season to be over so that we can crown a f$#@ing nominee already. And I blame the mainstream media for my apathy; when you're parsing a candidate's beverage choices and going apeshit over "controversies" that nobody actually seems to care about, it's possible you may have run out of relevant comments to make. MSNBC, CNN, Fox, y'all just wake me when August rolls around.

• The merger between Delta and Northwest Airlines has been set in motion, and while I think anything that makes Delta bigger and wider-reaching is probably a net positive for the South, I have to admit I'm going to be a little sorry to see this go:

Northwest is definitely the gangsterest airline of all time; you've got to be hard-core to paint a tribute to N.W.A. down the side of a fricking Airbus A330. Somewhere in the great beyond, Eazy-E is raising a forty of Old English to Northwest's memory.

At any rate, smart-ass T-shirts are a subject near and dear to my heart; I have this one and this one in my dresser right now, to name just two. And in high school, I had a shirt that said "Thank You for not Projectile Vomiting" (somewhat obscured photo of the very same shirt here), and I wore it on the day of my driver's test, just to see what kind of reaction it'd get from the test-scoring guy or the state troopers down at the Department of Public Safety. For some reason, though, I didn't think that they would actually be taking my picture and popping out my license that day, so once I'd passed the on-the-road portion of the test, we went back to the DPS office and they stuck me in front of a camera. And for the next several years, the bottom of my driver's-license photo revealed a little stick-figure man spewing lime-green vomit inside the universal "no" symbol. My mom was absolutely mortified, and when I lost that card a few years later -- forcing me to go get a new one made -- I'm fairly certain she was responsible.

"[Your raw sexual magnetism is so overpowering that I don't know what I might do around you, so for my own safety it's probably best if you s]tay at least 200 feet away from me at all times."
— Erin Andrews, ESPN